Written by John Ponio
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Tuesday, 28 August 2012 17:15 |
Web and Industry News

Mozilla has recently come out with version 15 of its popular Firefox web browser. Among a few new features, the most notable is the silent update feature. With it, Firefox will download and install the new update as a separate installation from what you were browsing the web with, and it will switch over the version when you next open Firefox. This way you never even have to see a needs-to-be-updated notification. Read on for links and more.

Written by John Ponio
on
Monday, 27 August 2012 10:24 |
Web and Industry News

Remember back in July when Apple launched that new ad campaign? People all around the web were very critical of how.. basically stupid it made Apple users look. Well, it looks like Apple realizes their mistake, because all the videos have been marked as private on YouTube. Because I directly linked to them, you can still watch them on my original article.

Written by John Ponio
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Monday, 27 August 2012 10:17 |
Web and Industry News

Security is a big concern with cloud storage. As anything over the internet is not 100% secure, you never know who is intercepting what. While getting username and passwords from one-time logins over the internet is extremely difficult, it's still very possible. This is a problem because if a cloud storage account is compromised, lots of potentially sensitive data is exposed. To add even more security to cloud storage, Dropbox has recently added a new two-factor authentication feature. The two factors in play are your user name/password, and a short code sent via SMS to your cell phone. The code expires in about a minute, so there's no risk of someone finding the code and being able to use it in the future. If your phone gets lost, stolen, broken, or anything of the sort, there are 16-digit backup codes that can be used to log in instead of the code sent via SMS. Client version 1.5.12 is required for this, but that's an easy install. You can download the client here, and make sure to enable the new security feature in Dropbox's security tab.

Written by John Ponio
on
Friday, 24 August 2012 17:42 |
Web and Industry News

A recent blog post by Nadim Kobeissi shows an absolutely giant privacy hole in Windows 8 that was put in place by Microsoft. Every time you install an app, Windows will send what app was installed, together with your IP address and the app's digital signature, to Microsoft. This was fairly obviously put in for security purposes, but having a database of who installed what apps is clearly a problem. If there's a central database, it could be subject to subpoenas and other governmental intrusions. You can read the nitty gritty details about what happens when you download and install an app here.

Written by John Ponio
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Friday, 24 August 2012 13:30 |
Web and Industry News

To the dismay of pretty much every PC gamer, Dark Souls was released with a resolution cap at 1024x768. That's pretty terrible, considering there are monitors out there with resolutions up to 2560x1600, and 4K is right around the corner. Well, a modder by the (online) name of Durante came up with a simple-to-use mod that will allow you to change the resolution. It looks like a lot of people are having success with it, but there are still a couple bugs that some people are reporting. If you want to check out the difference the mod makes, be sure to check out the forum post here. You can also download the mod and try it yourself from there, too.

Written by John Ponio
on
Friday, 24 August 2012 13:11 |
Web and Industry News

Amazon and NBC have reached an agreement where Amazon's Prime Instant Videos will get NBC Universal's video library. Details like how much Amazon is paying NBC for their library were not released. We can expect shows like Parks & Recreation, Battlestar: Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, and many others to show up on Amazon's service.

We are excited to be working with NBCUniversal to add their award-winning lineup of TV shows such as Parks and Recreation and Friday Night Lights to Prime Instant Video. We continue to invest heavily in our content selection for Prime members, and have now reached over 22,000 movies and TV episodes available instantly with unlimited streaming.

Written by John Ponio
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Friday, 24 August 2012 13:01 |
Web and Industry News

Samsung has recently released a teaser trailer for an upcoming Windows 8 laptop. According to the description, this laptop is their "newest Windows-8-ready innovation." Nothing more was released. It appears to be a thin, brushed-aluminum Windows 8 notebook. Watch the teaser below:

Written by John Ponio
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Thursday, 23 August 2012 13:07 |
Web and Industry News

For the first time in 25 years, Microsoft has updated their logo. With all of the market share Microsoft has been losing to Apple, it seems like Microsoft is finally getting their act together. The new logo reflects the cleaner, title-formerly-known-as-Metro -style that Microsoft has been adopting for all of its products. Personally I find it as a big improvement over their old logo (pictured below), but everyone can have their own opinions.

Written by John Ponio
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Thursday, 23 August 2012 12:58 |
Web and Industry News

Those of you who like to eat at your desk and frequent spill things are sure to like the newest keyboard out of Logitech. They designed it to be washable in up to 11 inches of water, as long as you keep the USB cord out of the water. The keyboard itself is nothing special, just your typical rubberdome keys in a design that is actually pretty nice. The keys have special protection against fading, so you don't have to worry about that. On the bottom of the keyboard there are drainage holes, but Logitech still says to let it dry for eight hours. You can pre-order the keyboard now for $39.99 USD. It goes on sale at the end of the month. You'd be surprised at how filthy your keyboard is, so $40 is not a bad price to be able to clean it without worry.

Written by John Ponio
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Thursday, 23 August 2012 00:37 |
Web and Industry News

Samsung has recently announced that it will invest yet another $4 billion in its Texas factory in order to increase chip output. This factory produces many different things for Samsung such as memory chips and logic products, as well as the mobile processors that Samsung is so known for. With the rise in demand of their chips, which are used in many smartphones and tablets including Apple's iPhone and iPad, more production has been a need for a while now. This $4 billion investment should help get things moving along nicely. Read the announcement here.

Written by John Ponio
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Thursday, 23 August 2012 00:26 |
Web and Industry News

PopCap Games, a subdivision of Electronic Arts that makes simpler games of the likes of Peggle and Bejewled, recently announced the sequel to one of their most popular games: Plants vs. Zombies. There's not much detail out yet, but it looks like it will be released in the late spring of 2013. You can read the announcement here, and keep up with the game's development as PopCap updates us here.